“On some level, probably for a long time,” I say. “Maybe even forever.”
Jared nods and looks at his lap. “I feel… I don’t know. I just… I don’t feel sad enough about it.” He whispers the last part, as if he’s ashamed.
My throat constricts again, and my breath hitches. “I know how you feel,” I say, because I don’t want him to feel guilty. Only it’s not true. I don’t know how he feels. Not at all.
Because every time I forget that my dad is really gone, and then I realize he
is
, I feel devastated all over again—like I’m losing him all over again. I even miss the bad cooking, the terrible B movies on the Syfy channel, the lame jokes, the stunts he used to pull to embarrass me. I especially miss the faces he’d make when he got phone calls from Alex’s mom, about nothing in particular, just her wanting to feel in the know about his job, while at the same time checking up on me and making sure I wasn’t being a bad influence on her son.
But when Jared was younger, before we both gave up on Mom, Dad and I moved heaven and earth to keep him from seeing her at her worst. We both kept him an arm’s length from that. The only problem is, of course, that Dad coped by working more, and I coped by taking care of Jared. Which means Dad pushed Jared an arm’s length away too—essentially he pushed Jared to me.
For the past fourteen years, I’ve been pretty much the only parent Jared has known.
A
fter Jared’s asleep, I sit at the kitchen table and stare into space. I don’t even think, I just try to absorb some of the peace from the quiet house.
And then the phone rings.
“If I’d known you’d leave us for an earthquake,” I say when I answer.
“Not now,” Struz says, and his tone makes me sit up straighter. Whatever he’s called about, it’s serious. I’m about to ask if everything’s okay, but then he three-names me. “Janelle Eileen Tenner, I’m going to ask you something, and I need you to give me the straight-up, no-nonsense, absolute truth on the answer.”
“Done.” Because whatever he asks, if it’s important I’ll tell him anything.
“Were you at the Federal Building downtown today?”
“No,” I say, and then, because that might not be enough, I add, “I took Jared to Disneyland.”
“And you didn’t open up the safe in your father’s office?”
“No.” I didn’t even know there was a safe in his office, but of course I’d love to get in there now.
The other end of the phone is silent, and I wait for Struz to speak, listening to the empty house and the sound of the steady rain outside, while a feeling of dread settles between my shoulder blades and begins to radiate outward.
“You’re not lying to me,” he says, but it isn’t a question. He knows I’m telling the truth.
I answer anyway. “No. What’s missing?”
He doesn’t answer me. Instead I hear him mutter to someone wherever he is, and then he sighs into the phone. “I won’t make it back there tonight, but I’ll come by the house to check on you tomorrow.”
“Okay.” I want to say something else, but I don’t even know what.
“And whatever you’ve been doing on this case, Janelle, you need to stop. Shut it down.”
“Why?” I ask. “What happened?”
But it doesn’t matter, because he’s already hung up.
I stand up and move over to the copies of the case files I still have spread out on the dining room table, wondering if that was my moment where I should have admitted there’s more to this thing than he knows. I pick up the stack of my dad’s notes about alias Mike Cooper—and the notes I’ve added from Elijah and Ben stalking him—and start reading through them again to see if I can somehow see something new. Alex is right—it’s ridiculous to suggest I can make sense of it when my dad’s entire team at the FBI has more resources, manpower, and experience, and they’re coming up empty. But I’m still driven to try. Because I don’t know exactly how Barclay fits into this thing.
And because if I don’t focus on solving this case, I’ll have to focus on how lost I feel without my dad around.
Two days, Ben, alternate universes, Wave Function Collapse, alias Mike Cooper, the house, radiation poisoning, and my father—dead. There has to be something else I haven’t seen yet.
I look at the receipt for the different kinds of chlorine I bought at the pool supply store. If alias Mike Cooper wasn’t actually going to use these for some kind of bomb, what was he going to do?
I doubt he was really planning to use them to clean pools. So what other uses are there for chlorine? I grab a pen and a scrap of paper and write them down.
water purification
disinfectant
baseline for a number of chemicals *
dry-cleaning
medicines
I think it’s also used in manufacturing to make things, everything from temperature-resistant nonstick Teflon on frying pans to components of cars, and a lot of other stuff, which means this is going to require more research and probably not get me anywhere.
When I put the pen down and look back at the table, I have that hyperaware feeling again, like someone’s watching me. I try to ignore it. It’s after two a.m., and I don’t hear anything to suggest Jared is awake. I get up, move a load of wet clothes from the washer to the dryer, grab a glass of water, and come back to the table. I need to try to solve this. We’re running out of time.
But the feeling stays with me, giving me goose bumps.
And when I look up, my eyes go directly to the window and my blood stops moving for a second, because Ben is standing under the back porch light in the pouring rain, his hair soaking wet, flattened on his head, rivulets of water streaming down his face into his eyes.
I put my hand to my chest and listen for a heartbeat and as I do, it comes back double the pace, double the strength, and I wonder if Ben is real. Or if going without seeing him for a whole two days was too hard for my subconscious. The rain just accentuates the darkness of his hair and eyes, and I imagine his lips tinged blue from the chill.
I must be dreaming.
How is it possible to go years and never speak to someone, never notice them, not once, and then suddenly think about them all the time? Even when you know nothing will—nothing
can—
ever happen between you?
Without realizing it, I’ve stood up and taken a step toward him, and I hold my hand out, pressing it to the window. Ben mirrors my movements, and I know he must be my imagination, that I must be asleep at the table and dreaming this, because everything else in my mind just falls away, fades out, and there’s just the thundering sound of the rain outside, the pounding of my heart reverberating through my veins, echoing in my ears, and the warmth of his hand on the glass.
I see his chest rise and fall, like he’s breathing heavily; wisps of warm air fog the window, and I realize I’m breathing just as hard.
My fingers tense, and I wish I had more control over this dream, that I could just will away the glass between us and feel his skin touching mine.
Then I notice his mouth moving. I look closer, focus on what he’s trying to tell me. And I realize this can’t be a dream. Because the Ben of my imagination wouldn’t be standing in the rain outside my dining room with red-rimmed eyes like he’d been crying, asking if he can come inside.
When I open the back door, he’s there in front of me. But the dreamlike illusion is gone because he’s shivering so hard his whole body shakes, and I can see now the rain only managed to wash away some of his tears. I suddenly feel so cold,
I
start to shiver too, and I have to clench my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering.
“What happened?” I ask as I pull him inside and shut the door.
His head drops. “I’m so sorry,” he whispers. “I didn’t have anywhere to go.”
“You can always come here,” I say as I reach my arms around him, pulling him to me. Water soaks the front of my clothes, but I don’t care because this is Ben, and we’re both freezing, and despite the secrets between us, I would do anything for him.
His arms hesitate at first, but then he presses his cheek against mine, and as his body sags, his resistance fades. His arms encircle me, his hands entwining in my hair.
“It’s okay,” I whisper into his ear, even though I don’t really know that. I know this is bad. Whatever drove him to come to my house
has
to be bad.
We stand like that for a while, just clutching each other. And the heat from his body contrasts with the chill of our wet clothes. Our breathing and heartbeats speed up in sync until the pounding of my pulse and the rise and fall of my chest are loud enough they drown out even the sound of the rain.
There’s a fierce tension in our bodies, as if any movement, any shift would release the coiled springs of our bodies.
I break away despite the physical ache that sets in. “Come on. Let’s get you into different clothes.” I try to ignore how ragged my voice sounds, and hope he doesn’t pick up on it.
Focusing on the task at hand, I grab the zipper of his hoodie and start sliding it downward. But before I can get to the bottom, Ben steps into me again. His hand touches my neck, and his forehead leans against mine. His face feels feverish, and he’s breathing hard—a fluttering goes through my chest. Because I want him. More than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life—I want Ben.
His hand tilts my chin up. I close my eyes. His breath is warm against my skin. Our noses brush against each other. I hold my breath. Before he kisses me, I can feel how close we are, like the nerve endings in my body are so sensitive they’ve extended inches outward, and the electricity between us charges the space between. Ben hesitates, and I wonder if he’s changed his mind. I open my eyes to check.
And then his lips touch mine.
They’re soft and smooth, and they taste salty from his tears. And then he opens his mouth, our tongues touch, I taste mint, and his other hand slides around my waist, settling on my back. My mouth opens wider, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get enough of him.
And his hand at my back pushes me into him. Hard.
There’s no space between our bodies anymore, and all thought turns to frenzy.
Our lips are pressed together, our tongues moving, exploring. There’s biting and sucking, and I don’t have time to think about what I’m doing. Our hands are all over each other, gripping and pulling as if we can get any closer without merging into the same person.
When I back into the dryer, I realize he’s been slowly pushing me. And then his hands slide down my back and he grabs my ass and lifts me up so I’m sitting on top of the dryer, the steady hum of vibration underneath me.
Out of surprise, our lips break, and Ben kisses his way across my jawline. He stands between my legs, and without thinking, I wrap them around him and pull him closer. His kisses trail from my ear down my neck, and a moaning sigh escapes my lips, mingling with my panting breaths.
I reach down for that zipper again because I need to put my hands on his skin, and his kisses move back up my neck.
When the zipper snaps open, Ben pauses, his breath hot in my ear. “Janelle Tenner,” he whispers. “I fucking love you.”
A smile breaks over my face, because even though it’s not the romantic declaration of most girls’ dreams, it’s
so
Ben to remember something meaningful I said, even if it was in front of Alex and forty of our classmates on a day that feels like forever ago—it’s so perfectly Ben.
I can’t help it. I grab his face and cover his lips with mine. And then I slip my hands under the hoodie and over his shoulders, down his arms, pulling it off. He shrugs out of it without resistance.
“Janelle—”
I kiss him harder this time, and he sighs into my mouth.
His hands slip under my shirt and touch skin, and my heart hammers a mile a minute, like it might just start beating so hard it will break from my chest and exist outside my body.
I reach between us and press my palm against his chest to feel his heartbeat—to see if it’s beating as hard as mine.
And it is.
But my hand—
My hand sticks awkwardly to his shirt.
That’s when I open my eyes, look down. And see all the blood.
“O
h my God.” My hands are all over him. Only this time the franticness is completely different. Because now that I’ve noticed it, I can see the blood is
everywhere
. And with this much blood, his injuries have to be extensive.
When did I become such a hormone-crazed psycho? Ben comes to my house in the middle of the night, obviously upset, and I practically jump him. And in his weakened-by-blood-loss state, he doesn’t fight me. If he ends up dying because I was turned on, I might shoot myself.
Something grabs my head and tilts my face upward, and I realize it’s Ben’s hands. He’s forcing me to look at him and saying my name.
“Janelle, it’s not my blood.”
And I’m not sure how that’s supposed to make this any better.
Okay, actually that does make it better. If someone had to lose this much blood I’d rather it not be Ben, but of course it begs the question, “Then whose blood is it?”
He doesn’t answer right away, and that crazy, heart-pounding fear I had just moments ago morphs into the kind of fury that makes people do things so regretful and so rash that their mind makes them forget. If he doesn’t tell me in the next ten seconds, I might strangle him.
I back up to avoid throttling him. I can’t possibly keep my voice from shaking. “Whose. Blood. Is. It?”
Ben refuses to meet my eyes. “Elijah’s.”
“And?!” I’ve never been Elijah’s biggest fan, but the fact that Ben isn’t jumping in to offer an explanation or at least some information freaks me out. “Is he okay? What the hell happened?”